What is the relationship between capitalism and mental health? In his most unsettling book to date, Franco “Bifo” Berardi embarks on an exhilarating journey through philosophy, psychoanalysis and current events, searching for the social roots of the mental malaise of our age.

Spanning an array of horrors – the Aurora “Joker” killer; Anders Breivik; American school massacres; the suicide epidemic in Korea and Japan; and the recent spate of “austerity” suicides in Europe – Heroes dares to explore the darkest shadow cast by the contemporary obsession with relentless competition and hyper-connectivity. In a volume that crowns four decades of radical intellectual work, Berardi develops the psychoanalytical insights of his friend Félix Guattari and proposes dystopian irony as a strategy to disentangle ourselves from the deadly embrace of absolute capitalism.

Reviews

“As a diagnostician, Berardi is among the sharpest.”

– Slate

“Bifo is a master of global activism in the age of depression. His mission is to understand real existing capitalism. Sense the despair of the revolt, enjoy this brilliant ‘labour of the negative’!”

Continuing with a series of bonus chapters to General Intellects, McKenzie Wark looks at Yves Citton's work on the ecology of attention. Given the what can only be described as the media shitshow of recent times, an ecology of attention might be a good thing to which to pay some attention.